Brokenness - Part 1

Ps. 51:16-17 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.

The Lord is looking for brokenness in His people. We might think of this as a negative thing, but it is not. While I don’t believe for one moment that the Lord is the author of suffering in our lives, I do believe that He uses every situation we go through to bring brokenness and more of the likeness of Christ to us.

We can think of brokenness in the same way a horse is broken. It just means that the power and personality of the horse is harnessed and yielded to the master. When the Lord brings us to brokenness, He is subduing the “self” parts of us and drawing us to a place of being yielded and soft before Him.

David wrote Psalm 51 after his sins of adultery and murder. God used David’s genuine repentance to break his heart and give him the final credentials for leadership and service. I have already written about the specifics of David’s repentant heart HERE, but it is important to note that his repentance lead to the brokenness we find in Psalm 51 and ultimately the worship that filled David from the core.

The Hebrew word for “broken” in David’s psalm is shabar, and it means to break in

pieces, rend violently, wreck, crush, maimed, crippled, crushed, shattered, broken…but also, it means to bring to the birth. In other words, when we are broken as David was broken, it is not the end of us, but the beginning – something of God is birthed in us.

We tend to think of brokenness as the end – something is destroyed and rendered unusable, but in God’s economy, true brokenness is the beginning of Godliness.

The world wants greatness. God wants brokenness. In God, brokenness is the first step to greatness.

The 4 Things That Lead To Brokenness

We are often broken over the things we love the most. I have found 4 things that the Lord uses over and over again to weave brokenness into the hearts of His servants:

1. The Presence of God - (Moses)

Moses journeyed from being a prince in Egypt to becoming the meekest of men. Moses had many encounters with the manifest presence, and it was in the presence of God that Moses’ heart was broken.  His presence breaks our heart when we are confronted with His awesome greatness. The sight of God involves the sight of self. When we see Him, we see ourselves, and a moment of honesty is forced upon us. Our encounter with God’s presence is not simply to give us an “experience” of God, but to build into us the character of God.

Job also had something to say about this:

Job 23:15-16 Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid of him. For God makes my heart soft, and the Almighty troubles me

Once again, the presence of God changed Job's heart. He was already a good man - now God increased him through brokenness.

Part 2: HERE
Part 3: HERE
Part 4: HERE

7 Things - Psalm 51 - David's Repentant Heart

David is a wonderful example in matters of repentance: Psalm 51

David will always be known as a man after God’s heart – yet this is the man who committed murder and adultery and a multitude of other sins.

The thing that sets David apart and causes the Lord to honor him, is his ability to turn his heart back to God again and again.

David did not minimize or deny his sin, he openly confessed his faults and repented. Psalm 51 is a record of one of the most poignant prayers in the Bible.

It is in this psalm that we witness some of the abiding principles of repentance – here it is from the Message version:

• David acknowledged God’s great mercy:

v1 Generous in love - God, give grace! Huge in mercy

• David asked for 3 layers of washing:

v1-2 …wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry.

-He asked that the erasable physical record of his sin be wiped clean

-He asked for his soul to be washed and made clean like laundry

-He asked for a spiritual cleansing of his guilt and shame

David turned from his sin – body soul and spirit. He wanted to be cleansed from it to every degree possible. He had no secret longing for it – he rejected sin completely.

• David was honest about the extent of his sinful heart:

v3 I know how bad I've been; my sins are staring me down. (…ever before me)

David faced the awful truth that he was rotten to the core like all of us. There was no excusing his sin, and no minimizing. David was totally aware of himself as he saw his sin looking back at him.

• David was wise enough to know that his sin and guilt was fundamentally before God:

V4 You're the One I've violated, and you've seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair.

David was willing to accept whatever punishment God deemed fair. He did not try to bargain his way out of the consequences.

• David cried out to God to make him whole at the core of his being – he wanted to be changed form the inside out:

v5-6 I've been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born.

What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

David knew that he was born in sin and that he must have God touch every area of his life. Redemption can only come from Him. (Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.)

Here is verse 10-11 form the Message and the NKJV. I doubt that there is any Biblical prayer that has been prayed more often than this:

God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

Don't throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

• David went after full restoration – he wanted to bring the healing he has found to others:

V13 Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home.

David had a heart to spoil the work of the enemy and get fully on to God’s team. He wanted to put action into his repentant life.

• David filled his life with praise:

v15 Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.

v17 I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for a moment escape God's notice.

V19 Then you'll get real worship from us, acts of worship small and large, Including all the bulls they can heave onto your altar!

This is surely one of the great keys of David’s life – he went from the depths of despair to worshiping the Lord. This is worship that comes from wholeness, gratitude, and a righteously broken heart. David’s heart was not broken and destroyed, but broken and made soft and full of worship.

Finally he became a man after God’s heart Acts 13:22 ‘I’ve searched the land and found this David, son of Jesse. He’s a man whose heart beats to my heart, a man who will do what I tell him.’

It is the Lord who described David in this manner. This man went to the end of himself and found God to be gracious, merciful and a healer – he came to a totally new understanding about God and himself, and devoted the rest of his life to adoring his King.